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By Jesse Humpal and Alexander Noyes
Air Force Officer; Brookings Institution Fellow
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On September 23, the Secret Service dismantled a hidden “SIM farm” outside New York: hundreds of servers and 100,000 SIM cards built to disable cell towers and jam 911 emergency networks. It sounded like a techno thriller. But it was real, and it exposed how fragile America’s telecommunications backbone has become.
Telecoms are the nervous system of American life. If they fail, hospitals cannot call specialists, planes ground, police radios go dark, and families lose contact. China’s Salt Typhoon hackers have already slipped into the switching systems of U.S. carriers. Russia has blacked out Ukrainian networks during military offensives. Iran has used telecom disruption to spread disinformation. These are not random acts. They are opening salvos meant to paralyze societies before a missile ever launches.
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The lesson is clear: Resilience itself is the most effective deterrence. If adversaries know networks can reroute, degrade gracefully, and recover quickly, their incentive to attack collapses. The best deterrent isn’t just the threat of retaliation. It’s making sure attacks don’t succeed in the first place.
Other democracies have proven this. Finland requires operators to meet statutory duties across 5G and undersea cables, giving it one of Europe’s strongest continuity regimes. That framework paid off in December 2024, when two cables between Finland and Sweden were damaged. Thanks to built-in redundancy, only about a hundred corporate connections and a few consumer services were disrupted, while national traffic carried on largely unaffected.
By contrast, similar incidents elsewhere have triggered multi-day outages for hundreds of thousands of users. Sweden mailed every household a guide on what to do if networks collapse, and ranks near the top of global resilience indices. Ukraine, under bombardment, has restored lines within hours, moved towers on trucks, and leaned on satellites to keep services alive. The evidence is imperfect but consistent: Countries that embed resilience into law and culture manage disruption with greater calm and coordination than those that leave it to chance.
The United States has struggled to follow suit. During the Salt Typhoon campaign, federal officials grew frustrated with the carriers they relied on. The government had the authority to act, but the companies held the expertise. Shouting matches between White House staff and telecom network engineers were common. Engineers inside telecom firms knew the networks better than the agencies directing them, yet they were not incentivized to prioritize national security over commercial credibility.
The result was hesitation and mistrust, exactly the environment adversaries could exploit. Unless this cycle of competing priorities and bruised egos is broken, it will resurface in every future emergency.
Telecom networks are more than pipes for calls and data. They carry 911 traffic, aviation links, banking systems, and sensitive government interfaces. Among the most delicate are the lawful access points created for intelligence and law enforcement under court order. In the United States they have often been treated as compliance obligations. In foreign markets, turnkey systems have been left wide open. To adversaries, these portals are a prize. Compromise them, and governments can be blinded or manipulated at critical moments. They should be treated as resilience priorities, not afterthoughts.
Responsibility for telecom resilience in the United States is scattered across the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Communications Commission, and private carriers. No single authority ensures that national communications can survive a systemic attack. The government has the levers but not the operational depth. Industry has the mastery but not the mandate. And the mutual distrust born of past crises keeps them working at cross-purposes. Voluntary cooperation will not close the gap.
Telecom resilience cannot rest on voluntary cooperation. Carriers that receive federal contracts, subsidies, or spectrum licenses should face enforceable, outcome-based standards like maximum recovery times. But rules alone are not enough. The U.S. should adopt measures other democracies already use: designate and harden critical network nodes, require public resilience audits, and mandate near-real-time threat sharing between carriers and government.
Together, these fixes would hardwire resilience into telecoms and turn deterrence by resilience from an aspiration into a reality.The next war may not begin with tanks on American shores. It has already begun with silent servers, jammed hotlines, and frozen logistics. By the time missiles fly, it will be too late.
Resilient telecoms are prevention, not recovery. A nation able to absorb outages denies adversaries early victories. It gives leaders time to think clearly and reassures allies that the United States will not collapse under pressure.
This will demand investment and political resolve. It will force difficult conversations about privacy, liability, and the role of government in regulating critical infrastructure. But the alternative is far worse.
Jesse Humpal is an Air Force officer and former director for resilience on the National Security Council staff.
Alexander Noyes is a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.
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